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The disaster of New Orleans, unspooling minute by minute on our
TV screens, has been wrenching  in one particular way even more
gut-twisting than Sept. 11.

You could watch the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and feel
horrified at the sheer violence and destruction of it; angry at the
murderous evil of Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers; heartbroken
at the awful suffering and loss. But there wasn't any cause to feel
embarrassed and ashamed.

Those are the emotions evoked by sights of the massive
lawlessness in New Orleans in the days after the storm and the
inability of anyone to stop it. Katrina unleashed a catastrophe of
nearly unimaginable proportions, confronting government at all
levels with enormous challenges. That the reaction to the hurricane
initially seemed uneven and slow is understandable, but even
allowing for the hellish circumstances, the breakdown in civil order
has been stunning.

Without order, which government exists to protect, nothing else
is possible. Not even rescue operations, as New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin has learned. On Wednesday night, as the city descended into an
urban dystopia straight out of the 1981 film "Escape From New York,"
he had to command nearly all the city's 1,500 police officers to
focus on re-establishing law and order instead of saving endangered
people.

Everyone understands desperate people getting food or water by
any means possible. Plundering tennis shoes and TVs, as a small
thuggish minority has done, is another matter. And the problem is
that there is no such thing as a little chaos. Once a climate of
disorder is set, it has a logic of its own. First, it was stealing
tennis shoes, and then it was taking potshots at a helicopter arriving
to evacuate people from the Superdome. Goons stole a bus from a
nursing home and threatened its residents. Rescue workers report
that rocks and bottles have been thrown at them and shots fired
their way.

Unfortunately, the urban revival that had swept much of the
country mostly left New Orleans behind. The atmosphere of lawfulness
that stood New York City in good stead after 9/11 and during the
2003 blackout  although those were much less far-reaching
disasters  was never established. The city never had a Rudy
Giuliani. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities
in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police
were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and,
according to The Associated Press, only had "3.14 officers per 1,000
residents  less than half the rate in Washington, D.C."

Law enforcement, of course, is primarily a state and local
responsibility, but in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, people
look to the federal government and the president to solve any
problem on their TV screens. Already the question is being asked if
the feds could have jumped in sooner (the National Guard is now
arriving in force). If President Bush pays a political price for the
images of lawlessness that have played out in New Orleans, it will
be the second time looting has hurt his cause.

The other, of course, was in Baghdad in 2003. It is a matter of
consensus now that the rip-the-place-apart looting in the initial
days after the fall of Saddam Hussein set the occupation off on the
wrong foot. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained the
looting away at the time as the natural exuberance of a newly
liberated people. One wonders: Has anyone in the administration read
their Hobbes? Or does he not make the "compassionate conservative"
reading list?

New Orleans has provided a corrosive lesson about government. At
all levels, government is overbearing and nagging, paying for
people's prescription drugs and telling us whether we can smoke in
restaurants or not. But when it comes to its most elemental task of
maintaining order and protecting property, it might not be up to the
task when it is needed most.

Keep that in mind and buy a gun, just in case.

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